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Don’t Talk the Talk

By Carlos Puig April 18, 2013 6:56 amApril 18, 2013 6:56 am

MEXICO CITY — There will be no more drug executions in Mexico, no more levantones (kidnappings with intent to murder) or encajuelados (dead bodies in car trunks, or cajuelas). There will be no more mob bosses, no more mob soldiers, no more hit men.

Now, there will be only “homicides probably linked to a federal indictment” and kidnappings — or, rather, “illegal deprivations of freedom.” And there will be just people with a first name and a last name, with no aliases and no job titles.

After six years of bloody drug-related violence and, according to the latest official tally, 65,362 murders related to organized crime, the new government’s best strategy for dealing with drug crimes is to stop mentioning them for what they are.

Last weekend the Interior Ministry, the Defense Ministry and the attorney general summoned all communications officials working for state-level police departments to talk about talking about crime. Eduardo Sánchez, under secretary of the interior, suggested that they avoid “the language that criminals use” and banish their nicknames and hierarchical descriptions.

The point was to avoid “sending the wrong picture to society,” Sánchez said. He was concerned that “many young people living in poverty or in very difficult social circumstances” might consider crime an alternative if they saw images of criminals with a lot of money. They might think, “better a short life of many pleasures, than a long life in poverty,” he said.

This is a marked departure from the previous government, which was obsessed with the language of the war on crime. President Felipe Calderón talked constantly about security, street battles and dead bodies. Criminals who were arrested would be paraded before TV cameras in front of tables stacked with money, weapons and drugs; each one was presented to journalists by name, alias and supposed position in the supposed organizational chart of their gang. After six years of that, most Mexicans knew the names of the cartels and their captains by heart.

Since he took office in December, President Enrique Peña Nieto has seldom appeared with the military, the federal police or even the attorney general. He has never mentioned the name of a criminal organization or a mob boss. Whenever he is pressed to talk about security or violence, he answers with the words “peace” and “prevention.”

The practice is catching on. According to one study by a media-watchdog organization, in the first three months of this year the use of the word “organized crime” dropped by 50 percent on the front pages of newspapers and by 70 percent in TV news broadcasts, compared with the same period last year. Although homicide rates have decreased only slightly, the word “murder” appeared half as often on front pages between last December and February than during the same period a year before.

Carlos Puig

The president has changed the language. But can he change the numbers? Will renaming the national security cabinet the “peace cabinet” — which has been done — alter the fact that there were more than 1,100 homicides related to organized crime and drug trafficking in March alone?

Peña Nieto campaigned on the promise of reducing by half the number of murders in Mexico. Now he won’t even talk about crime. And while he keeps quiet about it, the criminals are going about their business. Homicide rates have dropped a bit recently, but that’s part of a slow trend that predates this administration and the figures are still very high. Meanwhile, the number of kidnappings and incidents of extortions — from the federal government’s most recent crime statistics — have increased, according to preliminary reports from the state authorities. Newspeak cannot change reality.